Intelligent Mail (IM) is a 65-bar code used on mail delivered by the United States postal service. “INTELLIGENT MAIL®,” “IM®,” and “IMB®” are registered trademarks of the United States Postal Service. IM includes the following components: barcode identifier, service/mailing type identifier, mailer ID, sequence number and delivery point postal code (e.g., ZIP code, etc.). One reason mailers implement IMB barcodes is to qualify for automation prices offered by the postal service. The Intelligent Mail barcode is a height-modulated barcode that encodes up to 31 decimal digits of mail-piece data into 65 vertical bars. The code is made up of four distinct symbols. Each bar contains the central “tracker” portion, and may contain an ascender, descender, neither, or both (a “full bar”). The 65 bars represent 130 bits (or 39.13 decimal digits), grouped as ten 13-bit characters. Each character has 2, 5, 8, or 11 of its 13 bits set to one. The Hamming distance between characters is at least 2. Consequently, single-bit errors in a character can be detected (adding or deleting one bit results in an invalid character). The characters are interleaved throughout the symbol. The Postal Service's IM carries a data payload of 31 digits representing elements including a barcode identifier, a service type identifier, a mailer identifier, a sequence number, and a delivery point ZIP code.